It began slowly in Giovanna Minicozzi’s first weeks of college. A few students she didn’t know said hello. The occasional stranger asked how she was doing.

Then it happened more and more. She fielded questions about clubs she’d never been in, parties she’d never gone to and tests she’d never taken. Soon it seemed everyone on campus, from students to dining hall staff, was waving to her. Occasionally, friends — her real friends — would confront Giovanna: Why had she blown them off in the library that morning?

The same thing, she knew, was happening to her two sisters.

That’s when it was time to come clean to her friends: It wasn’t always her they’d been waving at.

Hawthorne residents Giovanna, Corinne and Rebecca Minicozzi are triplets, and they’re all graduating from The College of New Jersey in Ewing on Thursday.

And despite all the confusion that it could have prevented, they’d decided it would be better to make their own ways without being pigeonholed as the TCNJ triplets, never mentioning the sibling ties to others — at least not at first.

“Basically I had three times as many friends waving to me,” Giovanna said. “I would get mad and just ignore them.”

The talk usually ends in one of a few ways. Some respond with surprise, others disbelief. Some demand a new norm: “I had friends say, ‘I’m just not going to wave to you anymore,’” Rebecca said. “‘You say hi to me first.’”

Then the questions come. The 22-year-old sisters rattle off the answers the way someone else might give an address or phone number: Yes, they like being triplets. No, they’re not identical — though very similar looking. No, they don’t have telepathic connection. No, they don’t switch classes. Or boyfriends.

“I think we all feel fortunate that we went to the same college,” Corinne said. “But we’re not scared to be our own person.”

That explains the difference in their chosen fields: Rebecca is a finance major with a job lined up at the investment firm BlackRock. Corinne, who aims to work in the FBI or CIA, is a criminology and Spanish double major who’s going to Rutgers School of Law in the fall. Giovanna, who finished classes this winter and works a temp dealing with pension and welfare cases, majored in sociology.

The sisters didn’t take classes together, and they chose not to live together, either. Each carved out her own slice of TCNJ, with Rebecca traveling around the country for Phi Beta Lambda business conferences and competitions and Corinne spending a semester studying in Costa Rica. Giovanna had her own adventure: She became engaged last year and has a wedding planned for August.

Nevertheless, the sisters said having one another around was invaluable the past four years. They made a point to get together a lot of times during freshman year, having sleepovers and braving the college transition.

Corinne, who played varsity softball, said practice felt strange without her sisters in the field.

“We’ve always played on the same teams our whole lives,” she said. “I would have dreams that they were trying out or that they were on the team for a day.”

The young women’s mother, Elise Palazzi, said she knew having all three go to the same school would ease the difficulty of leaving Hawthorne. “It’s such an adjustment,” she said. “It was so great for them.”

There are other benefits too: Palazzi only needs to attend one graduation this year. “One party for the three of them,” she said, smiling. “One cake.”

Such advantages were less clear 22 years ago. The triplets’ older sister, Arielle, already was a challenge, and Palazzi knew another baby would make things harder on her and then-husband, John.

“I remember talking to my mom on the phone and saying, ‘Arielle is such a handful,’” Palazzi said. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle another baby.”

A new child was quickly ruled to be two new children. After numerous ultrasounds seemed to confirm twins — Palazzi described the process as, “You see four arms? You’re good.” — a third head appeared on screen. Four weeks later, she had triplets.

Now, for the first time, those triplets are preparing for lives apart: Rebecca moved to Wilmington, Del., on Wednesday for her BlackRock job; Giovanna is looking forward to life with her soon-to-be husband elsewhere in Hawthorne. Only Corinne will remain in the childhood home as she commutes to law school.

“We’re just a phone call away — there’s nothing to be nervous about,” Corinne said. “But it won’t hit me until they move out and leave me here.”

While her daughters seem ready for the next chapters in their lives, their mom — divorced from John when the girls were little and since remarried — could stand to see them stick around a bit longer.

“Last week they were graduating high school,” she said. “Two weeks ago, they were in kindergarten.”

Back then, they wore paper plates as caps and men’s T-shirts as robes to celebrate graduation to first grade. On Wednesday, the day before graduation and their last day living under the same roof, the sisters tried on their TCNJ commencement attire. Alternating between “Stop moving!” “Does this look right?” and “I can put it on myself!’ the trio adjusted one another’s caps, fiddled with one another’s gowns and pulled out one another’s tassels, bouncing between helpful and mischievous.

“We’d normally be hitting each other right now,” Giovanna said, laughing.